25. Epilogue #3
He reached over my head and found the tin stocked and set within arm's reach of the bedroll. "Breathe."
He worked two fingers into me at once, no count, no asking, and I stopped having opinions about anything.
Those same two fingers had been all over every piece of damage I'd collected this year.
They moved the same way now, steady, unhurried, knowing exactly what was under them.
He curled them and when he pressed up into my prostate, the jolt snapped my hips clean off the blanket.
My heels came off the bedroll, and I swore at the ceiling.
"There," he said, more to himself than to me, and did it again.
"Fuck. John."
"Keep talking." He spread his fingers, stretching me open around his knuckles, the burn sliding straight over into good. "I spent weeks listening to you boss this whole ranch around. This is better."
I leaked a steady mess onto my belly and rode his hand, shameless, working myself down onto his knuckles, and he watched my face the whole time. He rubbed his fingers against my prostate until my thighs shook and my toes cramped.
"When," I clenched down around his fingers. "When, damn you? Now. Tonight!"
He pulled his fingers free, and I whimpered at the emptiness.
He knelt between my legs in the firelight and slicked himself up, and I took my first proper look at what he'd been keeping to himself.
His fist slid down his own cock, thick as my wrist, dark, heavy, wet at the tip.
I couldn't work up any spit. My hole clenched around nothing.
He settled over me, hooked my knee up over his arm, and cracked his head on the low rock. He said fuck, once, dropped lower, and that put his weight exactly where he wanted it anyway. Then he held there, braced on one arm, the blunt heat of him lined up against me, making me wait.
"John."
"Right here."
"Get in me."
"Whose night is it?"
"Yours." I dug my heels into the bedroll. "Yours. Now."
He pushed in.
The stretch burned, then melted, then turned into a pleasant fullness. My lips opened on nothing at all. For the first time all night, I had no comment.
His forehead dropped to mine. Then he tilted down and kissed me, in no hurry about it, seated deep and going nowhere, and kept kissing me while I got used to the size of him.
The brass swung off his neck and tapped my chest while the rest of him filled the inside.
He was too big for this cave and too big for me, and everything fit anyway.
"Look at me," he said.
I opened my eyes and looked up at him.
He moved deep and even mercilessly. Every long pull dragged the head of his cock over my prostate and lit me up wrists to toes.
Every push drove the breath out of me in a grunt I didn't recognize as mine.
I dug my heels into the backs of his thighs to spur him on faster.
He hooked my knee, pinned it wide against the bedroll, and never broke stride.
Sweat gathered at his temple, tracked down his jaw, and dripped onto my chest. I counted it as mine, because it was.
He'd pressed my wrists back over my head when he lined himself up, one hand holding them into the bedroll until I left them there.
That's where they stayed. He hadn't said to move them, so I waited to be told.
"I love you, little one," he said.
My jaw quivered until I clamped down on it. "I love you too, big man." I lay there, wrecked and leaking, happier than I had ever been in my life. "And I'm never letting you leave."
"I never want to leave." He drove deep and ground there, and my eyes rolled back. "I'm home."
He sped up, and the wet slap of us echoed off the rock. His breath turned ragged against my ear.
I came untouched. I spilled in long pulses that reached my own chin, clenched around him hard enough to make him curse, heels locking behind his back.
He fucked me through it, gentler now, wringing every last drop out until I twitched and grabbed his arm.
Then his own control broke, thank God, and he drove home hard, again, harder, and buried himself deep and came inside me, his whole body shaking, his face in my neck. "Mine."
"Mm." I got a hand up into his hair when I could operate anything at all. "Took you long enough to say it."
He laughed into my throat, wrung out and still inside me, and the laugh rolled through both of us. Over on her rock, Nimue raised her head, determined that nobody was dying, and put it back down.
He pulled out slowly, and I felt the loss of him, his cum running out of me onto the bedroll.
I lay there sprawled, filthy, owned, and nothing in me wanted to move.
He cleaned us up with warm water out of the jug, careful around the healed knuckles out of habit.
His habits were going to outlive both of us.
Then he stretched out, and I folded in against him with my ear over his heart. His fingers dragged through my sweat-damp hair. The fire burned down, and the bones ticked outside, and his heart under my ear was the loudest sound left in the world.
And I was looking forward to listening to it for a very long time.